The same woman who gave me an earful in the common room last night is here. She calls after Judy, “You tell her, honey.” When she turns to me, she smiles innocently. “Don’t even think about reporting that. We’ll all swear we didn’t hear a thing. Enjoy your meal.”
Over lunch, while I’m worrying over Freddie and wondering if everyone in the world sees me as a bitch, Ruby Jo talks about the Fitter Family Campaign.
She shrugs. “They don’t like us mountain folk none too much. It’s funny, ’cause before my mom had me, the FF—that’s what we called them—was pretty strong down in our parts. I mean, they weren’t Q testing back then. It was more like making sure the town didn’t get taken over by Italians. Or gays. Or anyone who wasn’t purebred, homophobic white trash.” She pushes food around her plate as she talks. “Still is, I guess. Some of them don’t give two shits about how smart you are.”
“Some of who?” I say.
“Some of the FF people. You know.”
“No. I don’t.” Since it started, the Fitter Family crap has always been about smarts. Measurable smarts in the form of Q scores. Although when I think back to this morning’s class, I wonder if that’s all they’re about.
Ruby Jo looks me over and decides I need to be educated. “See, I think lots of ’em are like that, all wanting to be smarter than the next guy, make sure they got little Einstein babies and Einstein boyfriends and Einstein wives. That’s a good one. Einstein babies.” She laughs. “But that ain’t all of it, Elena. You think I left that piece-of-shit town because I wanted life in the big city? No way. I hate the city. If it were up to me, I’d hang out in my little piece-of-shit town, ride my bike, go apple picking, stuff like that.”
“But you left anyway?” I say.
“Well, where I come from, people like me don’t fit in so good. I mean, well.”
It’s not the first time Ruby Jo’s corrected herself. I want to tell her not to worry about it so much, but I don’t. Right now, I’m trying to imagine a place where someone as clever as Ruby Jo Pruitt wouldn’t fit in. Hell, maybe?
She leans in close, a schoolgirl ready to confess a secret crush on the captain of the football team. “See, the thing is, I don’t like boys so much.”
“So what? You like girls,” I say. “There’s nothing new about that.”
Ruby Jo cracks a crooked smile and shakes her head. “Maybe in Washington, but you haven’t spent much time in the sticks.” She nods her red curls toward Judy Green and Sabrina Fox. “You see those two over there? The tall ones who are always sitting together and whispering?”
“Sure. I saw them. The one with the darker hair lived on my street.” Used to live on my street. Now, Judy Green lives in the girls’ dormitory at State School 46.
“You see the way they look at each other? The way their hands touch when they think no one’s watching?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Those chicks are in love, Elena. Like with a capital L.”
Once again, I hear Sarah Green’s voice screaming at me on the street. How did she lose the Q points? Tell me that, El.
The only answer I have is this: Judy Green didn’t fail anything. No fucking way. And if she didn’t fail, maybe Freddie didn’t, either.
When lunch is over, I make sure to pass close to Freddie again. This time, there’s less fear and more pleading in her eyes.
“I want to go home, Mommy. Can’t you take me home?”
I die a little on the inside.
FIFTY-THREE
THEN:
I was in the kind of pain I knew from experience I would soon forget, but right now, the pain was an all-over pain, a leviathan of misery that squeezed and worked its way around every part of my body. Malcolm, gowned and gloved in hospital green, told me to push. Again. He’d been telling me to push for hours, it seemed, while a nurse fed me ice chips and patted the